Things to keep from birthday week

[random]

I thought it would be a good idea to have a thread dedicated to discussing what (if any) features to keep from birthday week.

My personal preferences are:

• Quake sounds, but set to disabled by default and you need to go into the menu to enable them (would require everyone to download them when joining the server even if not using them)

• pl_minepit added to the weekend

Randomizer will be gone until next april fools. I think most people have had enough randomizer for a year, and this is not a randomizer server

Discuss maps, features, and reverts that we could consider keeping

[huutti]

Keep lunchbox and sandvich reverts. Keep minepit. Don't keep quake sounds, have them for special occasions only.

[mjaded]

huutti's right, keep minepit in weekend rotation at least, i love that map. i would say keeping quake sounds is isn't the worst idea if they're off by default for each player, and it doesn't have the text on screen.

[slitti]

i agree

[Suspicious Carl]

maps: lazytown and minepit for weekend rotation 100%

quake sounds: 100% agree, i remember last year you were hesitant to add them because new people would have to download them, if you dont consider this an issue anymore then keep it as an option, however if you do keep it, remove the humiliation on the knives cus it straight up tells the server your spy and you just killed someone which fucks with him (it does this with YER and spycicle aswell)

reverts:
-Release Equalizer- hardly noticeable change since you have to be at 1 health to get the 162 damage, nobody would find it way more powerful then what we got

-2013 Dead Ringer- incredible weapon, the one were currently using is disappointing, people might see it and be excited they got the old 90% resis only to realize it scales down like crazy and you die more then you'd think, not to mention pyro across the board is far stronger on castaway and therefore chews through it like crazy, putting it to 2013 edition would help against pyros SO much, and wouldn't be OP

-Release Enforcer- i've discussed this one before but ill say it again, i honestly don't think this would make stock revolver obsolete, yes it would be an objective upgrade when using it with the dead ringer, but the other 2 watches would make it have quite the noticeable downside, taking stock using either of those would likely be preferable

-Croc O Style- this one is a tough sell because i am of the belief the individual weapon doesn't need to be accurate for the set, therefor i don't think we need to nerf the sleeper to get the bonus, the birthday week edition we used was cool because you got the headshot immunity, the extra bullet resis, the extra health AND the jarate explosion on headshot, but the tradeoff is you have to use genuinely the worst sniper rifle in the game (people seem to forget when you have the set its almost an equalizer because you cant headshot them either!), you are extra vulnerable to fire (bushwacka) and your extra vulnerable to explosives which is something to think about considering castaway loves playing airstrike soldier and pyro is buffed, but i understand if you are adamant on having the sets be accurate, if you are, i'd love to see the Saharan set route be taken where the weapons are set to the respective time period only when using the set

-Danger Shield- I'm actually indifferent on this one but i'm starting to lean towards revert, i don't know fully how to feel, i think both this and vanilla have very good use cases because on one hand countering pyro is a great power for sniper since pyro cant spam flares at you and it basically turns off the dragons fury which castaway heads are obsessed with, but on the other hand if flares are an issue why not just use cozy camper? at least with the reverted shield you can tank a quickscope, and the extra health kicks ass when you pair it with the huntsman, i always said huntsman should give a health bonus like gunslinger, and this is it, so i don't mind either way

-Blanket Lunchbox Drop- this one is walking a fine line because it is in some ways blatant custom balance, you can make an argument that dropping is a mechanic and therefor in line with how we treat things like airblast and minigun rampup, but i feel like the gameplay implications here are far more significant then those other 2, not to mention i don't want the banana to overshadow my beloved sammy, truthfully i just really want it on the dalokohs. so I'm going to show support for this and say add it, but im not going to fight for it, if it doesn't get added i completely understand

-Sandvich- man, you already know exactly how i feel about this one. i have fought tooth and nail for a long time showcasing all the ways that this is a perfect addition to the server that brings variety and satisfaction to all parties involved, i invented an entire lunchbox meta, bringing the steak from a fun but useless gimmick to a useful and versatile tool in heavies kit, also developing a beautiful yin and yang synergy with the sandvich that share the same goal but do so in 2 different ways, making everyone happy in the process. In the month from april 20th to may 25th we had began to develop a unique meta for heavy (i dont like using the word meta because it implies you have to use these but i have no better term). steak providing consistent healing and a speed boost to mid, good for 5cp and pocket meds at the cost of only being able to use it once in a while, and not always healing you to full, and the sandvich, which provides the incredible tool of having a bottomless supply of full health whenever you want it, aswell as a get out of jail health drop for you. i could go on forever about how amazing this thing is for the solo heavy, allowing you to charge into a fight, kill, retreat, top up, charge in, kill again, rinse and repeat to your hearts content, never a moment where you aren't ready for battle at the drop of a hat provided you have good gamesense, you can use it to bail out by eating it over and over again until a teammate arrives to take out the enemy, you can use it to brute force capturing a point or progressing the game, and ontop of all of this you get a health drop as a get out of jail free card, the trade off being of course everytime you eat you must lock yourself in place for 4 seconds becoming vulnerable, and the drop is inconsistent and not always available, making it a feature only to use in dire situations or when you know you are able to get it back shortly after. and yes, i fully acknowledge the esoterism and hill that must be climbed in order for the playerbase and newcomers to understand these changes, i acknowledge that we have had to explain to multiple people on multiple occasions that they should equip the steak if they want to throw health to their medics, but we WERE LEARNING. this was a hurdle we had pretty much overcome by the end of it's lifespan, the playerbase at large understood these changes, we developed a meta and right as we were getting comfortable with it, it was yanked away and changed all over again because "its too passive". we are now going on a month without it and what we are left with is 2 lunchbox items that pretty much to the exact same thing and i fear people are beginning to unlearn the hurdle, and if you want to make an argument that there shouldn't be a hurdle in the first place then fine but as far as I'm concerned its just less variety for a class that desperately needs it. since then i have campaigned to bring it back, at the time of writing this, 12 people have come to my aid, showing support. at the time of writing aswell, there are 2 vocal speakers against it. on the night of the 25th when i raged out about it, in the span of 2 hours 7 different people all backed me up, with half of them writing about it in the revert thread and i cannot thank them enough for doing so. statistically basically everyone loved it, everyone continues to love it, and it never needed to be changed in the first place, its time to bring it back! if you want more lore and a deeper explanation of why i love this sandvich so much, go to page 6 of the revert thread and read my massive essay on it

-Tide Turner- this one is absolutely a cope and i probably sound like a moron saying this but i honestly didn't feel like it was a straight upgrade to the other shields, during those 3 days i saw more demoknights using the screen and the targe then i did the turner, perhaps its because they didn't even know it was turned on in the first place but i dont know, i think extra shield damage and really big resistance bonuses are enticing enough to take over a million charges and turn control sometimes...? this also leads into my whole thing about changing the other shields aswell but thats a different topic we've already discussed before, so i highly doubt this will ever get added, but i'd love to see it

BONUS: Short Circuit- I'm including this as a bonus as it doesn't really pertain to the version used during wacky reverts, but its close enough to smissmas 2013 i think its worth mentioning. i have avoided any and all short circuit conversation because it is easily the most volatile and longest revert war we have had which finally ended like 6 months ago, and seeing as the war was in some ways my fault i shut my mouth and appreciated the version we currently use, however now that wacky revert day is over i wanted to bring it up for the first time. don't get me wrong i am fully content and happy with the version we use right now, but me and huutti share the same sentiment that we would love to use the january 9th 2014 edition of it. i fully concede that the smissmas 2013 edition is overpowered and shuts down explosive classes in certain situations, and for a long time i had dreamed of a smissmas lite edition that did the same thing but was just a little less powerful, as it turns out it exists! the version i am proposing uses the same speed and has the same mass AOE deletion ability smissmas 2013 used, but instead of only costing a pitiful 5 metal per attack, it costs 15 per projectile destroyed. i think it would allow you to mass delete projectiles and provide great support but only in smaller bursts. as a plus though you can still get metal from dispensers and carts, perhaps it could be bad when used on the cart, but i think that would be highly preferable to the ball (to be honest i still have delusions about the 2013 edition being fine but the proof is in the pudding, airtrike soldiers become raped bitches when you pull this thing out)

this concludes my list, once again birthday week was a hell of a lotta fun and thank you to everyone who helped fill the sessions
please consider these changes!! i would love to see them get added

[Asmo]

nuke SG and replace it with a randomizer server

[Scout]

If we're going to keep stuff from the birthday event, we should limit it to things that are 1) of high enough quality to actually want to play year-round and 2) grounded enough as to not feel out-of-place compared to other things we have.

Maps:

• In general, I think that if we're going to have a map in either rotation, it should at least somewhat look like a TF2 map, so no mario_kart or harbl_hotel.
• There's a version of Minepit from a couple years ago that makes it look like a normal map (but also has some layout changes): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2845236851
• Orange and Lazytown are probably the most debatable. On one hand, they do look like TF2 maps (at least to an extent), and we already have one classic, wacky (relatively speaking) map in the weekend rotation (Balloon Race). On the other hand, they aren't actually that good (at least not in the same way Mojave and the like are good), and having one map that can be described as such doesn't automatically mean we should add more. Personally, I'm leaning towards not adding them.
• Leaning no on Wacky Races

Reverts:

• Pre-2010 Sandvich can absolutely stay.
• Nothing else. I think we're at a great point with the reverts, we don't need more/different ones.

Misc:

• Quake sounds and 32 players should be event-only, keep them special.
• As great as randomizer is, it should 1000% be kept special.

[mjaded]

• In general, I think that if we're going to have a map in either rotation, it should at least somewhat look like a TF2 map, so no mario_kart or harbl_hotel.
• There's a version of Minepit from a couple years ago that makes it look like a normal map (but also has some layout changes): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2845236851

i was thinking about this. i didn't know if random had any unspoken rule regarding how a map has to look, so if he does then 100% run a TF2-ified version of minepit on weekends. if he doesn't care though, keep the original minecraft one.

[Mwa]

keep tf2ware,mario kart and minepit(a tf2 style ver?) ,
maybe even dropped launchbox items revert.
randomizer should be saved for special occasions.
harbl hotel aswell, but i want one of the porn images to be removed.
Quake sounds ehhh,but maybe since it can be disabled.

[Mwa]

nuke SG and replace it with a randomizer server

It still gets people sometimes,nuke it when it becomes very dead.

[Koli Dagmoso]

32 player servers seems like the only thing I'd personally be invested in keeping beyond birthday week. Realistically, most of the time the server will not max out to 32 anyway, but having the extra slots is useful incase we have two, or four, or six people who want to join in. I think Gabber has talked about it before, but most people refuse to seed a second server, as they'd rather wait in queue for the server where people are already at. 32 players can be overwhelming for some maps, but we can accommodate maps that work with our current player size as we already do when the player size is lower in the process of seeding the server or winding down the session.

Some of the maps we tried out were fun. I think anything in the main rotation should match the TF2 aesthetic, whereas on weekends I don't think that's nearly as important. If we were to keep orange, I'd really only be into having it if we could have 100% crits included each time we play, the map is a slog without that included. Minepit would definitely be good to start including on the weekends and see how much people enjoy playing it more regularly from there. The Quake sounds are fun but I don't really think its worth the extra downloads people would have to do, if we're going to have people downloading additional assets, it should be for a VERY good reason. As mentioned above, in its current state it also unfairly punishes Spy players by announcing backstabs.

[SomethingSomethingSomething]

I already made a long post about the Gas Jockey Item Set not really being all that powerful therefore harmless to add as a full time revert but I think some of the other reverts should be looked at to shake up the meta.
Cow Mangler - Given the most used Rocket Launchers (Air Strike and Beggars) can both crit and push out enough damage to be lethal against all classes at base health a 5th Rocket with a down side of no crits, 5% slower reload, and 10% less damage seems fairly balanced. I believe this nerf was done with the removal of random crits in mind, due to at the time a ton of community servers disabled it.
24 Max Players => 26 Max Players - This one has been talked about awhile due to queue times being annoying, although we likely could fill 2 servers of 24 I think there is FOMO about what they might be missing out on the other server. 32 did make koth maps a cluster fuck, 28 was less of a cluster fuck still somewhat bad for low health classes, but 26 seemed like a workable number.

Something I wish to note about "custom balancing." In some edge cases like item set bonuses and the attributes that were added in their removal, it is preferable to follow the intent of a bonus i.e items that don't traditionally have any playstyle synergy giving a bonus attribute. In the case of the Gas Jockey, Croc-o-Style, Medieval Medic, Expert's Ordinance, and maybe even the Tank Buster and Hibernating Bear, each one has significant synergistic downsides that hamper their usage together. Those latter two I won't argue for but the former should be considered for a revert. It is my belief that we should follow the spirit of the old balancing, rather than follow it to the letter.

I personally favor the unobtrusive item set reverts so I will list them by level of impact I believe they would have.
1 Expert's Ordinance (Shields already provide a ton of resistance anyway but even if you run a shield you are running it with a one time use melee)
2 Gas Jockey (Combo Damage being traded off for Movement Speed shouldn't scare anyone except the swarm of Koth BFB Scouts)
3 Medieval Medic (I'm not so sure about this one since the Amputator does give +3 health per second anyway, might feel the same or worse if the Amputator is reverted)
4 Tank Buster (I didn't see anyone using it and but gives you the chance to fire 3 Black Box Rockets on a level 3 Sentry)
5 Hibernating Bear (Brass Beast is already strong with the reverts)

[Hompo]

Keep cp_oranges_rc1 and cp_lazytown_lazydaze_b6, a lot of people had so much fun on these maps and they would be a great addition to the weekend rotation!

Cow Mangler - Given the most used Rocket Launchers (Air Strike and Beggars) can both crit and push out enough damage to be lethal against all classes at base health a 5th Rocket with a down side of no crits, 5% slower reload, and 10% less damage seems fairly balanced. I believe this nerf was done with the removal of random crits in mind, due to at the time a ton of community servers disabled it.

NEVER REVERT THE COW MANGLER TO THIS VERSION, THE VANILLA COW MANGLER IS THE BEST VERSION OF THE GUN. THERE'S REASONS WHY PEOPLE DON'T LIKE THE VANILLA LIBERTY LAUNCHER.

[hole filler]

Minepit is a fine map but I have two main gripes with it. First is the artstyle, which does seem a bit too goofy for keeping it on the weekend rotation. Second is that the lighting is fucked indoors and it is difficult to discern who is on what team. It looks like that version that Scout posted fixes both my issues, so I would be fine with putting that in the rotation.
Wacky races should either replace balloon race in the weekend rotation or balloon race should be removed. Despite the name I don't find it too wacky in aesthetic like minepit. Even though the gameplay is pretty different even from the closest vanilla gamemode (plr), I think it is a fun addition to the server. Balloon race is a terrible map in my opinion. Most classes are cucked out of even playing the game during the racing parts and most of the objectives where those classes can play are poorly designed. The third point is especially bad as no matter how imbalanced the teams are or how many heavy+medic stacks the lower team has, the team with the highground wins 95% of the time.

32 players shouldn't stay, it turns almost every map into two walls of meat slamming into eachother, aka dustbowl. 32 players devalues flanker classes (scout, pyro, spy) and benefits soldier & demo projectile spam. This game is at its best when all 9 classes are viable (see why I hate balloon race). While 32 players doesn't make it impossible to play flankers, take a look at 100 player servers (assuming there are still any active) to see this problem taken to the extreme. I don't think we should do this to accommodate 8 additional people.
On a somewhat related note since koli brought it up, I'm curious to see how VA2 would fare if there were serious attempts to seed it. The main problem is that the server with more players will almost always be the preferrable one to play, and it becomes a prisoner's dilema where the correct move to maximize your fun is always to stay in VA1. We need someone who carries VC and that a lot of people like (a few names that come to mind are Gabber, Hoog, and slitti), and 1-2 other people to riff off of in VC and I think some players would follow. If 6-8 people total (with the VCers) split off to VA2 when slots are instafilling, I think there is a decent chance of VA2 being seeded without cannibalizing VA1's player count. I would also suggest to random to work on a "quickplay" webpage that (((silver stars))) can link to in the GC. It would auto redirect to a steam://connect link with the currently active server that would benefit most from the player count. i.e. if there is one active server, seed that one and if there is one full or near-full server and the other server has a few people, it would redirect to the second server. I have doubts whether people would use it or how the logic on the backend would work, but it's just an idea I had that might help.

[Asmo]

Eh, we've has this discussion about 32 players before. As nice as it would be to not have to wait an hour to get in the server, I think it should remain capped at 24. Affects gameplay a tad too much.

[Appolz (with a z)]

Minepit good, textures are 100% sovl, good community meme map that is actually playable.
Lazytown good, it's pretty cramped and was a clusterfuck with 32 players but it could go into the weekend rotation easily.
Orange with artpass good, keep that version, but it should probably be an event only addition.
I don't know if harbl is a playable map or not because all who ever entered got filtered by DRACULA PENIS
32 players doesn't bother me but it can change the dynamics of some maps entirely. Having extra slots reduces the number of people waiting in queue and lets us face tank mass rage quits, but if it's worth the (potential) trade off is debatable.
If the Quake announcer is just loaded in at all times there won't be any incentive to re-enable it for special events.
The fact you have to equip not just the worst sniper rifle but basically the worst conceivable loadout in general to get the croc-o-style bonus might actually be balanced. It might need some bugfixes though cause I think I tanked some shots that I was in fact supposed to survive, but I think I only took part of the reduced damage I was supposed to.
The Gas Jockey set should never be enabled outside of funny revert times. It would force me to swap to either stock flamethrower or axtinguisher because there's no way to disable the set and I don't want to take +10% bullet damage on top of +20% damage from having the Powerjack out when I'm trying to turn people into health kits.

i don't want the banana to overshadow my beloved sammy, truthfully i just really want it on the dalokohs.

The banana would only function as a small health kit with a faster charge. In 99% of situation where the heavy needs to heal themself with the banana, eating it is the superior option whereas the steak and sandvich would give the same self heal on right click.
Sandvich would remain the self sufficiency option.
Steak would remain the offensive/support option.
Dalokohs would be the go-to face tank buff with some team healing support.
And Banana would become the modern audience's Sandvich, a support item that tourists expect you to run in place of a shotgun and then cry that heavy is a weak class allows you to keep your team from burning to death when you don't have a medic handy.

[banifatsiy04]

I haven't played during powerful reverts, but people seem to discuss other reverts during the week that I did play with, so I will tell my opinion on these

Quake sounds seem fine to me if they're optional and disabled by default. All of the special maps, except 3 were meme maps. The non-meme maps were pl_minepit, cp_lazytown, and cp_oranges. I haven't played on oranges, so I will give my opinion on other 2 ones. Minepit is a fun map. Someone suggested using a modified version to fix the style, but I am unsure if it's necessary if it is bound to the weekend rotation, although it would be the first map to not follow the artstyle as far as I am aware. cp_lazytown is a cool, but a rather bad map, and works better at 32 people. I don't think that keeping it would do any harm since it's just a rather normal CP map, but I think it would be too boring without 32 people, so I am against keeping it for the sake of not having boring maps in the rotation. Either way, all maps added from the event should start in weekend rotation first

For reverts, I have actually used the Tank Buster loadout with the reverted Battalion's and I liked it. Vanilla Battalion is only usable with a competent medic on the team, but otherwise the Conch gives more health with its passive ability, and more value with its active ability. The reverted Batallion is great as its easier to charge, has a unique mechanism for it, and the passive ability is worse compared to vanilla. And Black Box lets Soldier heal the damage he is required to take to get the ability, and the extra passive sentry protection is something I found to not be a big deal. Airstrike and direct hit soldiers are the ones usually destroying all the buildings, whereas Black Box is only better than the Cow Mangler at destroying them - so I don't believe it's overpowered considering the tradeoff of not having a shotgun and having one less rocket

Hibernating Bear's 5% crit resistance is something I didn't know existed, but it doesn't sound too bad at all. I usually use Brass Beast with Dalokohs Bar for extra HP. 15% extra max HP plus some overheal is a much stronger buff to Brass Beast than a merely 5% crit res. Whereas this set would give a much more prominent usage to Steak and Warrior's Spirit. But I mainly want this for Medieval Mode, plus I didn't even know about it, so take it with a grain of salt

32 players should be disabled outside of events. I would be fine having 26 or similar, but if joining from the community browser tab, the game will display a warning saying that the game was designed with 24 players in mind and that it's not a vanilla server and has ruined balancing. This means that less new people will join and we will have an harder time filling up 2 servers at once. Sometimes it's impossible to fill up 2 servers at once (like if you have exactly 26 players), but in a 24 player server, even when full, people leave every few minutes, so it's never too bad if you want to join it, even if frustrating. And if castaway will ever grow, it's best to start filling 2 servers than increasing the server cap more and more, which, as I said, scares away newcomers

[Suspicious Carl]

nobody has disagreed with my propositions which means they are all high iq suggestions and should be added

[Anti-Furry Duck-Grease]

Quake sounds were a cool iddition but I'm fine with keeping them disabled unless someone wants to activate them for themself, they get old quickly.

I haven't played PL_Minepit enough to establish if it's worth it or not, I only saw it killing the server one time but that's it. Weekend exclusive seems appropriate to me.

[Gabber]

32 players is the most interesting for me. I didn't hate it or see it affect gameplay negatively nearly as much as i expected.
From a pure session longevity standpoint 32 seemed to be really effective. Not only were a lot of people saved from sitting in queue hell for an hour, whenever we had a mass ragequit on mapswitch, losing 10 people still left us with a full server, whereas with 24 we would have had to wait a bit to recover to normal. During the 24 (lasted ₃₅ hours) sesh the increased player capacity made an obvious positive impact.
I was surprised to see how long we stayed at a full to the brim 32 on peak hours, not just NA, but EU too. Even fucking SG managed to hit 32 for a bit.
Pretty interesting to see that on peak hours we regularly have about 8+ people waiting in queue to join, yet none of these people ever bother to seed VA2. Sad!
Staying at 24 is probably the wise choice, but i was very pleasantly surprised by 32 being as fun as it was while also being beneficial to the sessions. At the very least, we should keep the option open for enabling 32 on special occasions and definitely if we ever attempt a 24hr sesh.

Randomizer was very fun, people got bored of it at the end because it was the main gimmick and there were problems with the execution, like being locked into playing it for an entire map because of 1 vote. If we revisit it, and i think the system we should use for it should work something like this: IF the majority of the server votes for randomizer it's enabled that round, at the end of the round a vote pops up asking if you want to keep playing randomizer or go back to regular gameplay, and if randomizer wins that vote you rinse and repeat at the end of every round until the majority gets bored of it. Obviously i'm not saying that randomizer should be on permanently, but something like once a month could work.

When it comes to maps the favorites were oranges and lazytown. I wouldn't mind either of these being added into weekend rotation. Orange might seem too gimmicky, but it's less obnoxious to play than fucking degrootkeep which is still in, and managed to kill one of the sessions during birthday week. Just kill that piece of shit already. Oh yeah and minepit is good too.

No quakesounds. Download bloat is bad.

[Anti-Furry Duck-Grease]

Yeah, 32 players has a lot of potential. If I were to pick the only bad thing about it is the massive numbers of RTVs required to change map on a full server. I remember being stuck in a Mario Kart limbo because we needed 20 rtvs which was basically impossible. The people who wanted to rock the vote kept loggin off so the number was basically unreachable.

[Pig]

IN ORDER

1. Do not listen to Koli, he is a retard

2. Listen to everything Carl says. He's rarely had a bad take and he has a pulse on what the people are thinking

3. Keep cp_orange, pl_minepit, and wacky races on weekend. Leaning towards putting the normal tf2-aesthetic into the main rotation

4. 32 players on weekend is a good good good good good idea. The argument that it is too many players for tf2 doesn't work for a community like ours that has a much wider variety of skill levels than most. We have lots of players with high ping, less understanding of game mechanics, and who just go afk during the round, so having more players on each team helps keep the average effectiveness of both players equal. 32 creates more fun lobbies. More chances for regulars to play. Much shorter queue times if any. 32 players works. During the birthday week I didn't have a single moment where I felt 32 players ruined the experience or was frustrating except when we did randomizer 100% crits.

[Koli Dagmoso]

Pig has raised a good point about trying 32 players for weekends. Weekends are already a time where the players expect a bit of a shakeup, since we already have the extended map pool, and weekends also happen to be the time where Castaway generally sees the most traffic. There was a valid concern about the warning given to players when they join in a server with a modified amount of player slots, but this would restrict that to only weekends. I think giving it a shot for a few weekends would be an interesting experiment. Now if we're thinking very longterm, I don't think 32 players is a good idea to keep forever, as I would prefer to eventually have VA1 and VA2 both active and seeing daily use, but 32 players may be a good inbetween while Castaway continues to grow. I'm also open to experiment with working to seed VA2 alongside any other interested people, maybe we CAN already fill two servers and just nobody is pushing the initiative enough, but as it stands I think the amount of active players we have is best served by one server with 32 slots available.

[Scout]

maybe we CAN already fill two servers and just nobody is pushing the initiative enough

I think this is true. We've supposedly been at this point for over a year, and there have been plenty of double sessions in the past, so really it's just a matter of actually getting people to seed. I don't see why we should abandon a part of Robin Walker's Vision™ to accommodate another 8 players when we could instead get another full server and accommodate another 24. And besides, wouldn't having VA1 be 32 make seeding VA2 harder? That's 8 people who could possibly be on VA2 who aren't.